1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to packaging of articles and, more particularly, to a wedge carton and insert assembly.
2. Prior Art
Various different wedge shaped cartons and containers have been used in the past. U.S. Pat. No. 1,252,051 to Stone discloses a carton case for collapsible tubes with sides that yield under pressure and bow or bulge outwardly. U.S. Pat. No. 1,833,974 to Powell et al. discloses a wedge shaped container with collapsible sides of bellows construction and a non-collapsible closure that acts as a brace. U.S. Pat. No. 3,924,799 to Lorenz discloses a collapsible protective tube with crease or fold lines.
For obvious reasons, it is sometimes desirable to package items in wedge shaped containers or cartons such as to more densely pack multiple packages into larger containers or for ease in shipping and storage. Another such situation is for irregular shaped articles such as the pole and engine of a string-trimmer. However, various disadvantages have arisen with prior art wedge shaped containers.
One problem is that it is preferable to provide an empty container that is relatively flat or compact, prior to insertion of an article or goods thereinto, to allow for compact storage of the empty containers and easier shipping of empty containers to a packaging or loading site. However, in the past, this often necessitated shipping of pre-printed and pre-cut container blanks in an unfastened or assembled state and having to do the assembly of the container, hand wrapping and gluing of the blanks, after the goods are placed on the carton at the loading or packaging site. This of course required relatively time consuming manual assembly of the container around the goods.
Another problem is that partially preassembled containers such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,833,974 that have crease lines to make the containers flat for storage, do not provide sufficient stiffness to the container after the goods are inserted to prevent partial inadvertent collapse during shipping of the container with its article or when multiple containers are stacked on top of each other.
Another problem is that it is desirable to have printed matter such as graphics on the outside of containers. In the prior art, center seams on a main panel, such as shown in FIG. 4 of U.S. Pat. No. 1,833,974, prevented uninterrupted graphics. In addition, graphics on collapsible panels of a container were often distorted when the container was enlarged because the panels did not always fully straighten or because the panels partially collapsed during shipment which lessened the attractive appearance of the packaging.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to provide a new and improved wedge carton and insert assembly that overcomes these problems as well as provide other features and advantages.